Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: The meaning given to letters is significant for students’ ability to be successful with\nalgebraic tasks. Recent studies have noted that even when students have a sense of\ngeneralised number, they often have a natural number bias in the values they think a\nletter can take. This study analyses interviews from 13 students across two schools to\nexplore the meaning they had for letters. The responses supported the idea that some\nstudents have a natural number bias and also that the notion of a letter representing a\nfraction is problematic. In addition, three other factors emerged which affected the\nmeaning given to a letter: what was mentally stressed; the desire to avoid “messy”\ncalculations; and viewing an equation as an example of a wider class of equations.
Author: David P.L. Hewitt
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2332161582